TREES
The more I look at and think about trees,
The more disgusted I become!
Trees may appear beautiful and noble to some people,
Mostly country-dwellers,
But to me they are ugly and ignoble
Because indicative of tyranny and exploitation,
The leaves so many slaves of the trunk and branches
Of the tree-proper, feeding it
With energy from the sun and moisture from the air,
Leaves sucked dry by the rapacious tree.
No, I don't like trees, for I see in them
The prototype of the feudal-world-order
Of peasants exploited by aristocrats,
Whether high- or low-ranking,
And the Few accordingly thriving
At the Many's expense
In a thoroughly diabolical, subnatural
system -
One sanctioned not only by trees but,
Originally and primarily, by the stellar roots
Of evolution in the Cosmos.
What were the peasantry
In relation to their aristocratic lords -
Good, bad, less bad?
Probably 'less bad' is
The most objective description
Of a class implicated in a pagan absolutism
And corresponding, in their subjection,
To planets and leaves.
One might say demons as opposed to devils,
And to anyone who looks at a tree objectively,
Rather than through the distorting lens
Of a feudal sympathy, leaves must appear demonic
And branches positively devilish.
As to the trunk, 'divine' could only
Be applied to it in the very relative,
Spiritually fundamentalist sense of Creator,
As when one distinguishes Jehovah from Satan
Or king from peers.
So anyone with the least shred
Of spiritual subjectivity would have no option
But to perceive in it
The theocratic autocracy
That gets the lion's share of the booty,
Since bigger and stronger than
everything else.